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Mom's view

EVE HALL (STEINHARDT)

After Kingsmead I went to Wits, where I did a BA in English, French and German, and met Tony. We married in 1959 and by 1961 we had son Philip, and twin sons Andrew and Christopher.
Sharpeville shocked us into joining the ANC, and I worked as regional organiser for what was then its “white wing”, the Congress of Democrats, while Tony was a journalist on the Star. I spent a few months in jail for “furthering the aims of the ANC” in 1963, and as we were both “listed” and could no longer work in South Africa, we left with our sons into exile in 1964. We came back to Johannesburg, very joyfully, in 1991!



In the intervening years, we lived and worked in many countries, Tony always in journalism, eventually specialising on the Middle East, then Southern Africa. I began as a journalist, but while working for Oxfam in India, I became more interested in development and gender issues, and did an MA in Rural Development at Reading University in 1976. After that, I worked for many years for the International Labour Organisation, a UN agency, concentrating on gender issues in employment in Africa mainly but also Asia. I retired in 1997, but I still do the occasional consultancy that takes me around the continent and helps keep my mind limber.
We’ve lived as a family, then later as a couple, in Tanzania, Kenya, India, Somalia (an incredible eight years!), Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, as well as a couple of two year spells in England. Now, we live in splendid isolation in the beautiful lowveld bush, on a private nature reserve, where our sons, their wives and our ten grandchildren love to visit from England. I had a mastectomy for breast cancer in ’01, but now feel strong as an Amazon.

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